CITATION AND TENSE FOR REVIEWING PREVIOUS RESEARCH IN THE INRODUCTION SECTION OF ENGLISH 35 SCIENCE JOURNALS BY NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore the citation pattern in relation to tense choice for reporting pastliterature in the Introduction section of English research articles by non-native speakers. Since theresearch dealt with one type of papers, i.e. research articles, Genre Analysis was adopted. Theresults indicate that in terms of types, IPC (Information Prominent Citation) referring to generalareas of research is much more dominant than APC (Author Prominent Citation) referring tospecific areas whereas in the standard pattern the number of APC should be more dominant thanIPC since IPC only functions as an “opening move” for reporting past literature. As IPC is moredominant than APC, the present tense also outnumbers the past tense.